Christmas Day 1579, Nova Albion ~

On this blessed day of our savior, I write once more for the ages, this parchment being the last of my supply. Thanks be to God, my Christmas supper was a coney rabbit I felled with a stone, spitted over a fire. After a fall from the rocks whilst seeking mussels and oysters, I have become a cripple. My leg is wrapped in seaweed, but the infection has begun.

If it takes hold, then I shall join our lord in heaven. Or perchance I will be taken to th’ other place. Tomorrow morn, I shall cross the ridge behind me and seek the tribe of savages to beg their assistance in curing my wound. There I will die or be born anew.

Months ago, the Golden Hind departed. That Captain Francis Drake will return to Plymouth Harbor a hero ‘tis a certainty. The ship is laden with Spanish treasure from the galleon we captured in the waters of New Spain.

Before the Captain left us, the Hind was repaired here on the beach and made seaworthy for the long voyage home. In our weeks on shore here in New Albion, we found it to be a pleasant place of great bounty: the seas swim with fish, the fields run with game, and there are berries and nuts in the bush. The natives here are agreeable and handsome savages. We traded them beads and other baubles, of which they were much enamoured. The Golden Hind was provisioned with meat, bird eggs, and berries for its way home.

The captain sayeth it was a good place and the only protected bay we had encountered on this coast. Hence he claimed Nova Albion for England. Captain Drake crafted his logs to conceal the location of this port from the Spaniards, but claim it for the Queen he did.

No structure was built, as attention was directed on repairing the ship for its voyage west. Still two of us were left here as the Queen’s garrison with direction to build such a fort. Scarcely a fortnight had passed when my lone companion disappeared on a hunt and did not return. I found his body some days hence, believing him to have been savaged by a bear or wolf. With some effort, I dragged his remains to the sand and bestowed on him a proper Christian burial with a cross of driftwood.

Now I am the last Englishman on this shore. I am to die a lonely death unless these savages can heal my leg with their potions. Today I thank our Lord Jesus for the coney, be it my last meal in this world. I am, as always, your humble servant, Alfred Dunham

26th day of June 2019, Nova Albion –

Through these centuries, my soul has been condemned to wander the strand. What I have done wrong, I know not, though my thoughts be wicked. Am I condemned to this fate or given one last chance to redeem myself before being sent to the fires of Hell? I speak now to my diary, having not lifted a quill since the day before my death. That end was painful, yet merciful, as it would not have been in my lifetime that any civilized ship would again visit this harbour.

Am I really gone? Why, then, do I haunt this shore as a ghost of the man I was? Little more than a boy, I had seen sixteen summers when I sailed with Captain Drake. Upon the ship’s departure, I filled my days fighting to survive, catching seabirds and rabbits and shellfish in the pools by the rocks.

The good Lord willed that I should not live to see another year, so I remain only as a spirit, undelivered from my purgatory in the mist.

In my time here, others have discovered this coastline. Spaniards, yes, most having emigrated from New Spain. At first, I tried to fight them and protect the Queen’s lands, using a strand of kelp as a cutlass, but none could see me. Chinamen and families of Manila came, too, from lands beyond this vast sea. And others with good British names, though these colonials behave like none I knew.

Behold them on a hot day in summer as they come to the shore of New Albion to seek solace in the cool waters. They bring their strange, coughing wagons and their bathing garments of many colours. They turn their hounds loose on the strand. They gorge themselves on victuals kept in bags that shine with ore. They gaze out to sea and then occupy themselves with their hand mirrors, which they peck with greedy fingers and coax to play tunes. In years past, there were vile machines known as boomboxes, but hence they have been replaced with these hand mirrors. Some speak now with spells and command their mirrors to reveal the current weather forecast or to begin cooking their evening meals back home. Remarkable.

As a boy back in Bristol, there is one thing I would have paid honest money to see. Since I am become a ghost and not bound, I think, for heaven, I feel released in admitting such a vice. On a hot summer’s day in Bristol, there were many fine lasses who played on the shores. And like many a sixteen year old, I discovered they had curves in very fine places. I would have paid a queen’s ransom to see one of these comely lasses strip naked to her bum. (Aye, I took my pleasures in the inns of ports frequented by sailors, but not with lasses such as those. When paying for a poke, a man counts himself lucky if the wench has all her teeth.)

Call me a wicked ghost, but I was wishing the same of these lasses playing on the beach today in New Albion. This ghost has been chaste, but not in my mind. For centuries, I have suffered with the curses of a young man of sixteen summers. The native lasses, the colonial lasses, the New Spaniard lasses…I have watched them wenches all with thoughts most impure. And my mind misses no details, such as how spare the bathing garments have become on lasses in this modern age.

And so, I watched a young lass with golden hair and apple blossom skin take to the waves today. A Venus among mortals, her generous curves were held back by naught but an orange string on the bottom and a scrap of fabric abreast. Then a wave hit her and knocked her to the sands. As an honorable ghost, I quickly flew her way with thoughts of a gallant rescue, but soon realized this damsel was not in mortal distress. How could I, a ghost, have saved her anyway? The wave passed, and she stood once more, with no more than a bruise on her bum.

Praise the Lord, for I beheld something I have not seen on such an angel before this day. When stood the lass, that bruise and more were ever so visible, for the orange string covered her bum no more. The wave that had knocked her into the sands had absconded with one length of her garment, leaving her only with the top portion. Her waist stood completely bare in form and, as she bent over to search the waters for her missing string, I saw that no fabric remained to hold back her womanly graces.

Ah, what a vision. The lass was laughing gaily, which pleased me to see, since such an event could have been quite the calamity for her, if not for those who beheld her form. Today, it was not. She thought it as humourous as did I. Her string garment was fetched from the wet sands, untwisted, and restored to her hips not long hence. She probably will go on to marry a gentleman, perhaps even an officer, and bear him many sons from those broad hips.

My purgatory remains, perhaps lengthened by my wickedness. But I hold a memory that even Satan cannot take away: I beheld the Golden Hind of an angel in all her glory. Ah, Nova Albion, I can haunt thee yet for many a century.

~ Photographs by the ghost ~